While virtual reality has been used by the military and by space scientists for the last decade, pharmacologists, molecular biologists, and theoretical physicists are beginning to venture into its domain. Simply speaking, the technology provides heightened representation of the real, physical attributes of scientific models. It is a tool that takes visualization and interpretation of data to a new dimension--to the point at which a researcher, in a sense, touches, interacts with, or is engulfed by the model that he or she has created. If Alice Through the Looking Glass were written today, the heroine might have used a head-mounted display to go through to the other side, instead of a mirror. Inside head-mounted displays, explains Walter Robinett, director of the head-mounted display project at the University of North Carolina, "are two 3-inch- square liquid crystal display television screens. In front of them are some lenses so that the image ...
Researchers See A Wealth Of Applications For Virtual Reality
X-ray crystallographer Vivian Cody has found a way to sit--virtually--in the midst of enzyme drug binding sites. She especially likes to experience the feel of it all--the pushes and pulls that a drug goes through as it finds the coziest place to rest on a protein. Although this kind of molecular space exploration sounds like fun and games, some scientists in academia, industry, and government see it as a most serious and advanced application of "virtual reality," an emerging computer technolog
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Robin Eisner
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